CSA Week #16

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Mark your calendars – Potluck at Amara Farm!

Join us on Friday, October 11 for a potluck at Amara Farm from 3:00-6:00PM. We’ll be making signs for the March Against Monsanto on Saturday, October 12. We’ll have sign-making materials handy, but feel free to bring your paints, markers, boards and sticks!

Farm Updates

We are really starting to move into the west coast second spring 🙂 Kale and collards and kohlrabi and bok choi are all sizing up and looking happy about the rain. Arzeena, Russell and I have been doing our happy dances too since it’s been raining. At Ripple, we’ve drained another 2500gal of water (geez, it only took us one month to go through it!) and so the rain is a huge relief.

Farming takes all we’ve got, and more. That’s why we feel so much gratitude when the weather helps us out. The more I get into this way of life, the more I realize that farmers complain about the whether for a reason! It can be so frustrating when we run out of water and the heat is beating down on our tender little seedlings. But I also know it takes a deep love of this earth we live on to remember that we are never working against the forces of nature, we are working with them. Sometimes that means we have to run around throwing floating row cover on crops, or bound out into a thunderstorm to rescue tender seedlings, or scurry about with armloads of mulch to rescue wilting cabbages. Anyhow, it’s not like we want to be doing anything else. This is a good life.

What’s in the shares this week?

All Shares:

Salad mix

Beans

Carrots

Kale

Parsley

Full Shares add:

Summer squash

Melon

Cucumber

Tomatoes or tomatillos

Recipes: Fermenting the harvest!

Arzeena’s carrot pickles

Trim and cut carrots however you like (slices, sticks, rounds, etc.)

Stuff a mason jar of your choice of size full with carrots

Add:

1 TBSP kosher or non-iodized salt (sea salt is good)

1 TBSP miso (Arzeena uses Shiro Miso)

Optional: 1 tsp Sriracha hot sauce to make it spicy

Fill jar with non-chlorinated water

Cover the with the mason jar lid and shake to distribute the salt, miso and hot sauce. Allow the jar to sit on the counter for about one week. If any of the carrots float to the top, they may develop a white film. Simply remove any of these rogue carrot slices. When the carrots start to taste sour, transfer them to the fridge. They will keep for eons!